The jacket is key to fall's strong mood

This fall, structured jackets are kicking Michelle Obama's cardigans to the curb.

After several seasons of sweet and ladylike, fashion has found its edge. The jacket -- be it long, loose and boyfriend-style by Stella McCartney, shrunken into a schoolboy silhouette at J.Crew, sequin-dusted at Zara, cropped and rendered in crisp white from 3.1 Phillip Lim or studded and shoulder-padded at Balmain -- is the key to fall's strong mood.

And for good reason. No other piece of clothing, except perhaps a pair of heels, is as transformative. A jacket is an instant confidence-builder in uncertain times. It's a kind of body armor that makes you sit straight and walk tall, and it covers a multitude of imperfections.

This season, the jacket is at the center of the 1980s trend, the motorcycle trend, the aviator trend and the return-to-professional-dressing trend. A jacket need not be expensive to command respect. But there is nothing like a jacket to make you appreciate good design -- the elegant drape of a shawl collar, the gentle embrace of a shaped waist, the perfect peak of a shoulder.

If all this talk about jackets sets off a wave of nostalgia for Pat Riley, "Miami Vice" and Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl," remember: There is a difference in how jackets are being worn this fall and how they were worn in the Armani heyday of the '80s and '90s with pleated, full-legged trousers and corporate-looking, matchy-matchy pencil skirts.

The trick now is to balance a strong jacket with some leg. That could mean a bandage skirt (if you're 22), leggings, skinny jeans or even just a strappy shoe. Because this time around, women aren't just dressing like the boys, they're making jackets their own.